BookWalker

Note: I will refer BOOK☆WALKER as Bookwalker in this review. 

Bookwalker for the newbie, what is Bookwalker?

Bookwalker was established in 2010 by Kadokawa Shoten, a Japanese publisher and part of Kadokawa Future Publishing in Tokyo, Japan. It is a place where you can purchase and read manga as well as light novels online no matter where you are in the world. This service doesn’t require monthly or weekly subscriptions or any fees, it's just like Ebay for manga, pay as you buy. That said, not all manga are charged, there are some free manga for you to read as well. 

Bookwalker’s library is huge, at the time of this review, there are around 13,339 titles. The genres of manga on Bookwalker are broad and rich including Comedy, Romance, School Life, Non-Human, Slice of Life, Shoujo, Imouto, Girl’s Love/Yuri and many more. If you are a big manga fan who always find binge-reading manga every second of your free time worthwhile, Bookwalker’s manga library will surely satisfy you. 

Besides its large manga library, Bookwalker is also known for its good deals and perks monthly. To me, this is what actually keep their customers on the service. First, let me walk you through how this site works. When you put money in your Bookwalker’s account, it will be converted into yen (Japanese currency) and 1 yen = 1 coin. Then you use these coins to buy manga and light novels on this website. 

As I mentioned above, Bookwalker offers a lot of great deals for its customers. For example, if you have never purchased anything on Bookwalker, you will automatically get 50% of your coin back on your first payment. In addition to regular bonuses and discounts programs, Bookwalker also has a Coin Affiliate Program. Affiliate Program is quite popular these days, you may have heard about it already. This program allows you to earn coins by sharing an affiliate link of any Bookwalker manga/ special events of your choice. Every time anyone uses your shared link to purchase Bookwalker, you will get 3% of their purchase. You can also earn coins based on your Membership Rank. There are more promotions and sales on Bookwalker such as Theme promotions to help you explore new series with a discount price, Title promotions,… Take your time to explore Bookwalker, I believe you will save lots of money on using their service.

Is Bookwalker safe?

To me, Bookwalker is relatively secure since they review and update their website and payment security regularly. Just like other premium paid manga websites and apps, some issues were still be found but Bookwalker’s team will surely support users and improve their service each update. 

Is Bookwalker legal?

Bookwalker is a completely legal site for several reasons. First, Bookwalker is a manga reading site established by Kadokawa Shoten, a Japanese publisher and part of Kadokawa Future Publishing in Tokyo, Japan. This is a Japanese renowned company with no copyright issues recorded in the past so we can rest assured that it uses manga from trustworthy sources. Secondly, the fact that you must pay to view manga on Bookwalker means that you are supporting the authors, the artists as well as the rest of the manga team. 

Is there an app for mobile/tablet/TV?

Currently, Bookwalker has already developed an app for Android and iOS users. You can download Bookwalker app on Appstore and Google Play. 

BookWalker review

 1. Content library 

Bookwalker has a huge content library with up to 13,339 titles ranging across various manga genres including Girl Love, Fantasy, Dragon, Romance, School Life,… Bookwalker’s manga are mainly from the following publishers: Yen Press, UDON, Dark Horse Comics, One Peace Books,… Every manga all offers a free trial read so you can all have a look at the first few pages to see if you like it or not before buying. However sometimes this preview doesn’t include the manga pages but only the cover and forewords. Plus, although the number of manga is a lot they don’t have popular manga such as Naruto, One Piece, Death Notes, Detective Conan,… 

Bookwalker not only offers a huge library of manga, including free ones, each volume is also charged at the same price throughout the whole manga. This is great because manga is not normally sold like this traditionally. 

 2. Resolution

The manga pages are super clear, high resolution and easy to read. On laptops, you can read it full screen without any ads or distractions. You can zoom in on the page to up to 300% as well but this resolution makes the page is blurrier than the original 100% resolution. That said, I have never encountered any manga pages that are too blurry to be able to read. 

 3. Reading experience

Just like other manga reading services, Bookwalker designed their reading window distraction-free with many features such as full-screen reading mode, easy access to the table of contents while reading, the direction of page turns and single/double spread display. Another cool feature is the tap setting field which allows you to freely adjust how much space where you click to turn pages, and how much space where you click to get access to the setting. At the bottom of the reading window, there is a zoom in and out buttons as well as the reading progress bar. In terms of turning pages, you can do it by clicking the left or right of the manga page or scrolling up and down using your mouse or touchpad. Overall I find reading manga on Bookwalker quite convenient and smooth as there are no lagging or buffering when loading the manga. 

 4. User interface

One of the things I like about it is that they organise their manga by many different genres, by publishers, categories and popular searches. This allows you to explore manga in many different ways. 

At the top of the homepage, you will see all of the latest events, promotions and new releases. Plus, the Primary Navigation includes the search bar and browse tab. The full menu, including Popular Searches, Exclusive Light Novel, Categories, Genre, Publishers will pop up when you hover over the browse tab. This menu appears as the sidebar as well. 

When you scroll down, the first thing you see is Popular Searches (Manga, On Sale, Pre-Order, Rankings, Light Novels, Free,…). Next is Newly Added, On Sale, Pre-Order, Simulpub Release, Kadokawa ebooks and lastly, recently viewed ebooks. Each manga will be displayed with a poster, light novel or manga, what’s included (bonus item,…) and the price of each volume. 

When you click on any title, you will be redirected to that manga page. Here, you can know more about the summary, Series title, Japanese title, author, artist, publisher, genres, published time, page count. All of this information is clickable so for example, it’s very easy for you to find more manga by the same artist. Down below the manga details are also other volumes and recommendations. 

Source: Top Streaming Sites